Early Exposure to Environmental Chaos and Children's Physical and Mental Health.

ABSTRACT: Environmental chaos has been proposed as a central influence impeding children's health and development, with the potential for particularly pernicious effects during the earliest years when children are most susceptible to environmental insults. This study evaluated a high-risk sample, following 495 low-income children living in poor urban neighborhoods from infancy to age 6. Longitudinal multilevel models tested the main tenets of the ecobiodevelopmental theory, finding that: (1) numerous distinct domains of environmental chaos were associated with children's physical and mental health outcomes, including housing disorder, neighborhood disorder, and relationship instability, with no significant results for residential instability; (2) different patterns emerged in relation to the timing

SUBMITTER: Coley RL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4379485 | biostudies-literature | 2015 3rd Quarter

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature